Repentance= metanoeo
Questions
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What is repentance?
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Do we need to repent?
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Why>>>Why not?
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What is the source of repentance?
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Is repentance a one time experience?
- What is repentance?
Metanoeo= A change of mind and heart.
- Do we need to repent?
Not if your earthly experience is in union with the Heavenly One who is calling you to Himself.
Why?
We are broken sinners standing in need of change as the Holy One breaks upon our lives in ongoing revelations of Himself. Every manifestation of Him requires fresh repentance from us.
We are changed from one dimension of glory to another and another and another of the present progressive action of God.
Why not?
You must tell us why not.
What is the source of repentance?
“To give repentance…”
To give= dounai=
To offer>>>give>>>put>>>place>>>“to give”
Friends: We will hopefully get to #5 next week. Are you excited?
In the meantime there is a wonderful video I want to share.
Is repentance a one time experience?
There is a tense in koine known as the descriptive present, or the progressive present, which depicts an action in progress.
Welcome to repentance.
Every episode of God’s dealings with us, every last one, involves a change which must take place within us where we are brought into alignment with Him & His ways. Such is the progressive present of repentance.
The story has been told of a beautiful incident that occurred many years ago in the North of England.
A young Salvation Army girl, only recently saved, was overflowing with the joy of the Lord and was eager to share her salvation with all others. Walking along the street of a little Durham city, she saw a tall, gray-haired man coming toward her and, stranger though he was, she stopped him and said,
“Pardon me, sir, but are you saved?”
The tall stranger leaned over toward her and answered, with a quizzical smile playing on his kindly face:
“My dear,do you mean ESOTHEN, or SOZOMENOS, or SOTHESOMAI?”
The Salvation Army girl was bewildered - it was “all Greek” to her!
She did not know that she had stopped bishop Westcott, one of the greatest of Greek scholars and an editor of the famous Westcott and Hort edition of the Greek New Testament.
He had asked her, using three different tenses of the Greek verb: “Do you mean, I was saved, or do you mean, I am being saved, or do you mean, I shall be saved?”
And then bishop Westcott, who was indeed saved and knew that he was saved, lovingly explained a little of the three tenses of the gospel to the young girl, and showed her something of the riches of her past salvation, her ongoing salvation, and her future salvation, from spirit to soul to body; and before they separated that earnest young girl knew more about the gospel and her Saviour than she had ever known before, and went away rejoicing that she had asked this tall stranger whether he was saved."
He Comes; He Calls; We Follow
One of the many fundamental truths hidden in plain sight in the Bible, is the truth that when God calls we come, and when He commissions, we go forth in His name…PERIOD! The general and popular concept that God’s call is a matter of an offer to come, and His commission is an offer to go forth serving, each respectively subject to our agreement, is the height of contrariety in respect to how Jesus, as Lord, operates administratively in matters of the kingdom of God. Jesus’ choice of a word to indicate the effect of the call of God sets the scene for our understanding: In Jn. 6:44, Jesus testified that, “No man can come unto me, except the Father who hath sent Me draw him: and I will raise him up at the last day.” (KJV)
Though the Authorized Version (King James Version) makes it clear that the action of coming to Christ is not set in motion by our choice to do so, but by the action of the Father, without which NO MAN can come to Christ, yet it, along with other conventional translations, does not make clear the force of the Father’s “call.” The “call” is really not merely a “call.”
The Greek word has a far greater force than “call.” The force of the Greek word falls nowhere short of “drag.” What Jesus really said, in the choice of His wording, was that no man is able to come to Him unless the Father drags that one.
Jonathan Mitchell’s Translation of the New Testament presents to us the full force of Jesus’ meaning. Here it is with the Greek extended and amplified: “No man is able (or: is presently having power) to come toward Me unless the Father–the One sending Me–should drag him [as with a net] (or: draw him [as drawing water in a bucket or a sword from its sheath]), and I Myself will raise him up (resurrect him; stand him back up again) within (or: in union with) the Last Day.” We’re not dependent entirely to Mr. Mitchell’s text alone, for many other students of New Testament Greek have noted the same fact. Even Vines (very conservative) Expository Dictionary of New Testament Words, is careful to note immediately under listing of “draw,” that “dragging” is indicated. The sense is continued on as Jesus says emphatically, “…and I Myself WILL raise him up…” (Emphasis mine) No ifs, ands, or buts.
But we can come to the issue from another perspective—that of the Book of Acts record of the conversion of Saul of Tarsus. Toward a major change of mind (repentance), I implore the reader to check out that record again. You see, most Christians, in reading the account, presume things utterly foreign to what went on there on the road to Damascus, when Saul (shortly to become Paul, an emissary of Jesus Christ) is thrown to the ground by a bright light from heaven, followed by a disturbingly-questioning, attention-arresting, Voice of authority.
What we have in that scene is the resurrected, glorified, Jesus, with the kind and level of prerogative possessed only by Deity, commanding Saul’s recognition of Jesus’ lordship. No, no, no, not anything like the popular concept, “will you accept Jesus as your Lord?”
It’s the Lord BEING Lord of Saul, because that’s who He IS. It’s the Lord COMMANDING Saul into a saving and serving relationship with Christ. There’s no mere offer of salvation or service. Saul is made to understand that the One he has been persecuting (in persecuting Christians) —as Saul as Paul will later write-- “IS Lord of all.” When Paul would later write in Ephesians, “For by grace are you saved through faith…,” he was explaining the nature of his experience theologically.
What happened to him on the way to Damascus was grace in operation—powerful grace, dragging grace, non-negotiable grace, effective grace, stopping Saul in his tracks and bringing to bear upon and within him, that persuasive Power that births saving faith. Saving faith, the faith that trusts God, comes from being completely convinced by the Truth. The process of saving faith is a process of so absolutely impressing the Truth upon the heart that nothing else is possible. It is, ultimately understood, the faith OF Christ. Jesus had intrusively inserted Himself into Saul’s life, and did so, as it were, with batteries included, i.e., when Christ comes in, He comes in with His faith included. Faith is a gift, within the supreme gift of God’s Son to us. “For by grace are you saved through faith, and THAT not of yourselves, it is the GIFT of God.” (Eph. 2: 8, 9 KJV) The Mitchell translation of the last phrase reads, “the gift of and from God (or, reading it as apposition: the gift which is God).”
Later Paul, in writing to the Church in Philippi, summed it up quite nicely for us: “…that I might apprehend that for which I have been apprehended of Christ Jesus.” (Phil. 3:12, KJV) Here again we have a case where the Authorized Version blunts the full force of what Paul was saying. “Apprehend” does convey the action, if we think of “apprehend” as police might apprehend a criminal who is attempting to escape, but it is better rendered from the Greek as “seized,” or “grasped,” or “taken hold of.” Paul desired to grasp that for which he had been grasped of Christ Jesus. How perfectly he describes in those few words what happened to him on the road to Damascus. It’s so clear: Jesus grabbed him for Himself and for the kingdom of God.
We see the result as recorded in the end of The Book of Acts, with Paul receiving all who came to him in prison, “speaking to them of those things pertaining to the kingdom of God, and of the Lord Jesus Christ.” -John Gavazzoni-
Just to answer the basic question “What is repentance?” simply and clearly:
The Greek word in the New Testament that is translated “repentance” is “μετανοια.”
μετα (change)-----------νοια (mind)-----------μετανοια (change of mind)
To repent of one’s behaviour is to have a change of mind concerning that behaviour.
If a person has had a genuine repentance (change of mind) concerning his behaviour, he will cease behaving in that manner, and will behave differently thereafter.
Salvation- by Rev. S. Crane
Salvation is not getting into a good place, but into a good state. It is not being where you cannot sin, but it is being so you will not sin. Lock a man up in jail and he cannot steal, for there is nothing there to steal. He is where he cannot sin the sin of stealing. God does not propose to save us from sin by locking us up in heaven.
Make a man thoroughly honest and he will not steal, no matter how much there may be to steal. He is saved from the disposition to steal. Salvation, therefore, is such a state of moral perfection as delivers us from all wish or desire to sin. God proposes to save us by so educating our minds and hearts that we will not choose to sin. To the degree, therefore, that we obtain this moral education we are saved, and we are saved to no greater degree. No matter where we are, in this world or some other, we are saved only so far as we are able to reject the wrong and choose the right. It is of vast importance, therefore, that we seek this moral education now; that we seek salvation from sin now. The more of this salvation we get now the better – the better for us here and hereafter. Seek salvation – seek moral education, therefore, now, for in it is the promise of the life that now is and of that which is to come.
You must be saved. God wills to save you. Why do you not obey his will and seek salvation now? Sometime you must believe in and confess Christ. Why do you not believe in and confess him now? Sometime you must repent of your sins. Why do you not repent of your sins now? Sometime you must learn the truth of God. Why do you not learn that truth now? Sometime you must obey God’s truth. Why do you not try to obey that truth now? Sometime you must experience the purifying and saving influence of Divine grace. Why do you not try to experience that influence now? Can you tell?
Baptist Testimony
It has sometimes been claimed that the doctrine of probation, or repentance after death, has a tendency to cut the nerve of religious efforts. Not so, however, thinks Rev. Mr. Williams, editor of the St. Louis Central Baptist . He says: –
“Could it be known that there is probation after death, the knowledge would not make less urgent the business of saving souls.”
So we say. What people need to be taught, is, that sin is an evil and a bitter thing. That the longer it is persisted in, the longer we make ourselves miserable. and that the sooner we repent and turn to God, the better.
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